RUCA to Gabba – The not so Kutty Story!

My blogs on cricket are reserved for tributes when someone close to my heart bids adieu to the game, it was reserved for the contemporaries of mine and more specifically when Ganguly, Dravid & Sachin slid gracefully into the twilight of their careers. Cricket is always called a Gentleman’s game, however the ‘gentlemanship’ in cricket is waning over the years, as the mantle is being passed on from one generation to the other, much akin to the societal deterioration in values we see around. Further Cricket has always produced two sets of cricketers, street smart & cerebral. In the Indian context, while Dravid can be categorized as a cerebral cricketer, Dada (Ganguly) falls under the street-smart category and if you ask me, Dhoni also falls into this category. This is not only true in India; the below table gives you quick run through on my take from the cricketing world I grew up watching. Introspect on the personalities listed below, and you will get the drift.

Country	Street-smart	Cerebral
Pakistan	Javed Miandad	Imran Khan
West Indies	Vivian Richards	Clive Lloyd
Sri Lanka	Sanath Jayasuriya	Kumara Sangakara
Australia	Shane Warne	Steve Waugh
England	Ian Botham	Mike Brearly
South Africa	De Villiers	Shaun Pollock
New Zealand	Brenden McCullum	Kane Williamson

 

However, these qualities get rubbed on to a chosen few from the previous crop of cricketers.  Though a gentleman’s game in the colonial era, in the subcontinent the gentlemen were groomed in the narrow streets or gullies of overcrowded cities. This blog is about A particular gentleman who once ruled the streets of Madras (or rather one street) and went on to be, not only a Street-smart cricketer, but also a cerebral one, a perfect recipe for tasting success in International cricket. And, boy he did!!!

In Indian cricket the street-smart ones get to play ceremonial farewell matches with all the pomp & splendor thrown in with a guard of honor et al, while the cerebral ones just fade away into oblivion, Dravid, Kumble, Dinesh Karthik…The recent one to join that illustrious company is my very own Madarasi (Chennaite) Ravichandran Ashwin.

Ashwin epitomizes the tribe of no nonsense Cerebral South Indian cricketers, I’m happy he carried the baton of this tribe with poise & grace, as you read the following names you will get an idea, Chandra, Prasanna, Vishy, Kirmani, Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Kumble & Dravid from Karnataka, Venkatraghavan, Srikanth, L Siva, W V Raman, Dinesh Karthik from Tamil Nadu, Abid Ali, M L Jaysimha, Azhar, VVS from the undivided Andhra Pradesh. Most of them exhibited humility, while humility was a virtue and won the hearts of puritans like me, the flamboyance the street-smart cricketers displayed was a crowd puller and contributed to the all-important revenue when the economic landscape of cricket went through a major transformation.

Ashwin was the latest addition to the cerebral list above, but what separated him from the rest was the street smartness that complemented his cerebral approach, He would display his cerebral side when he  thought about the ‘Revs’ RPS (Revolutions Per Spin) when pushing a quicker one through the air and following it up with a slower one, and then go on to display his street smartness when being alert on an overenthusiastic non-striker backing up too far and ‘mankading’ him. Off spinners are unsung heroes in cricket. The leggies are often up there along with the speedsters in the bowler’s hall of fame.

Ashwin is not done yet, I expect him to be contributing to this great game by being the next Harsha Bhogle wielding the microphone, or a Gary Kirsten coaching international teams, or the next Kumble churning out Cricket data analytics software, or even a Paddy Upton getting into the realm of mental strength training of sportspersons. You never know, he might shun all of the above and become a life time patron of RUCA (Ramakrishnapuram Underarm Cricket Association) and will end up contributing his clones of grounded Street Smart + Cerebral cricketers to the Indian cricket pool.